Wireless network resources may include multiple slots within a frame for information related to voice or data signals. A frame may be defined by time and frequency, and slots may be located at particular times and frequencies established by an access node or other network node assigning signals to the slots. Various frames or slots within frames may be dedicated to control signals to establish or maintain wireless communication, or intended for bearing data of an application on one or more wireless devices. Control signaling may be minimized by establishing a schedule of anticipated data bearing signals over time.
One type of loading on a wireless network may be related to a number of slots dedicated to wireless communication in one or more frames. The number of slots or frames available within a given time period for an access node depends upon bandwidth of the access node. An amount of slots dedicated to a control signal and a data bearing signal may be based on application requirements for each of the one or more wireless devices and may be measured by an amount of resources (e.g. slots), which in one example may be measured as physical resource blocks (PRBs). As available resources for each access node are limited, it may be desirable to reduce overhead of control signals by using a persistent or semi-persistent schedule of dedicated resources and to increase capacity of network by providing appropriate amounts of dedicated resource slots, which in an exemplary embodiment may be measured as an amount of PRBs anticipated to be used for each iteration of the persistent or semi-persistent schedule.
Overview
In an embodiment, the method for allocating resources in an access node may include the following. The access node may determine an application requirement for a wireless device and allocate a dedicated resource slot for the wireless device for periodic transmission of a particular size and rate of occurrence. The access node may also allocate non-dedicated resource slots which may be used for data from the wireless device when the dedicated resource slot is insufficient to carry all of the voice or data signal provided during a particular transmission iteration.
The access node may receive data packets for delivery to or from the wireless device. Certain applications such as VoIP or VoLTE, require bidirectional data transmission, but may emphasize one or the other at a particular time, depending on who is sending a signal (i.e. talking or otherwise making noise about a threshold) at a given time. As packet size may vary, it may be desirable for the access node to compare a size of each received data packet with a size of the dedicated resource slot allocated to that wireless device during the particular transmission iteration.
When the size of a received data packet exceeds the size of the dedicated resource slot for that iteration, the received data packet may be truncated to allow some of the received data packet to be transmitted in the dedicated resource slot. The rest of the truncated data packet may be transmitted in one or more non-dedicated resource slots that occur before the next anticipated transmission iteration. The wireless device or other network node may retrieve all portions of the truncated data packet by looking in the dedicated resource slot as well as each non-dedicated slot when it is determined that the size of the data packet exceeded the dedicated resource slot.